SECT. III.] HAPPINESS WITHOUT CULTURE. 385 



lization corresponds with our abstract notions. If its dark 

 side, which we are too much accustomed to look upon as 

 necessarily evil, is overlooked or under-estimated, and the 

 theory is indulged that all the countries on the globe may 

 become assimilated in manners and morals to Europe, doubts 

 may arise whether such a consummation is indeed so much to 

 be wished for. No one, it is true, now gives any credence to 

 the idyllic descriptions of a golden age ; yet the information 

 given by many travellers of the condition of some primitive 

 peoples is too well authenticated to be entirely rejected as 

 fabulous. 



Capt. Woodes Rogers, and other travellers of the seventeenth 

 century, describe the natives of Port Natal who at a later period 

 were almost entirely exterminated by the Zulus as a people 

 of innocent manners, kind and hospitable to strangers, and as 

 living in a state of ideal happiness. The inhabitants of Chiloe, 

 who neither have nor require physicians and lawyers, living 

 with the Indians (to whom, since 1829, they have ceded 

 their country), in peaceful vicinity, are said to be in a similar 

 blissful state : murder, robbery, debts, are not heard of; drun- 

 kenness is only seen among the foreign sailors ; doors are 

 not barred; general confidence and honesty prevail. 1 The 

 patriarchal happy life of the colonists of the small island 

 Pitcairn (in the South Sea), now transferred to Norfolk Island, 

 is too well known. 2 To this may be added what Father Garces 

 (as communicated by Humboldt), narrates of his visit to the 

 Indians in the vicinity of Casas Grandes, south of the Rio 

 Gila (1773). They were peaceable agriculturists, cultivated 

 maize, cotton, and gourds, extremely gentle, and living to- 

 gether in the greatest concord. The missionary pointed out 

 to them the advantages of a mission, when they would have 

 an alcalde to administer full justice. The chief replied, " We 

 neither steal nor quarrel, what occasion have we for an alcalde ?" 

 East of Surabaya, in Java, in the Tengger mountains, in the 



1 Blanckley, in " Journal of the Royal Geogr. Society," iv, p. 351. 



2 Beechey, "Narrative of a voyage to the Pacific," 1831; Bennet, "Narra- 

 tive of a whaling voyage round the globe," i, p. 44, 1840; Moerenhout, 

 " Voy. aux lies du grand Ocean," ii, p. 283, 1837. 



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